On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 16:02:54 +0100
Peter Wiehe <peter_AT_pwiehe.de> wrote:
Dear Peter,
> I didn't have simple programs in mind when I said "fast hack".
> Instead of fast hacks I could call it "direct coding with minimal
> design". Maybe that's not much of a difference. I think often
> developers themselves call it a fast hack. Sorry if that's
> disrespectful. I try to avoid that term in the future.
>
> So what do you think of Plan9 when you say simple UI programs are
> harder to maintain?
central to every program, I think, are data structures. If you manage
to do that right, everything else seems to fall into place. That's at
least the experience I had over the last few years.
Many people think that the UI somehow reflects data structures, but
often the opposite is true. Many people that develop software with
"simple UIs" often have a UI-driven approach, yielding horrible data
structures and lots of hacky code as they try to compensate the bad
data structures.
If you ask me, if you find your data structures to be flawed and you
cannot fix it, you might as well start again and redefine your data
structures. This does not mean that your interface has to change, just
the internal representation.
To answer your question in a way: Little code does not mean little
time, the opposite is true. It often takes a lot of time,
reconsideration and rewriting to formulate code that is short, elegant
and easy to maintain and extend.
With best regards
Laslo
Received on Wed Oct 30 2019 - 17:38:27 CET